Liquid Numbers

The series of drawings as part of the gallery exhibition Natural and Artificial Behavior is from various investigations of physical simulation and purely algorithmic geometr/topology. The first drawing, with the help of Brad Rothenberg who is working on the funicular script, from a network topology study that we did for a Tower design. Basically I was looking at two types of algorithm for a network topology with specific geometrical expressions. One is a seed condition in which as lines are constructed between points, the net constantly updates and reorganizes its geometry step by step. In another version, I was looking at a different algorithm for connecting the points all at once. This is a field condition and the difference in computation is that i unleas a set of different rules on the same field of points, and each system generates a different geometrical outcome. The second drawing I did with the help of Mat Howard who is working on a network topology script from Cellular Automata rules. This is rule number 10 and the interesting feature of this computational system is that as the recursion of the rule continues, the network becomes more and more baroque. Basically it moves from rectaliniearity to curvilinearity through the increase of information and recursion. The last drawing i did uses computation in a completely different way, it uses computational fluid dynamics to generate a membrane based on a geometrical primitive that is subdivided into various regions. This is computation in its most "calculus" like guise, that it is, it is computation as a means of truncated heavy calculations to relate particle to particle and particle to field conditions. As I keep making these drawings for the show I become more and more interested in the issue of the natural and the aritifical. My friend Jon randomly asked me about the Olympic Stadium and wondered if i was interested in the soap bubble geometry. Well, that's really not soap bubbles but rather voronoi, which is algorithmic and topological. But like the physical computationa of soap bubbles it works with inputs and outputs where the system updates itself for minimal pressure. Basically I am interested in phsical and algorithmic forms of compuation to produce various kinds of geometrical expression, or just to invent certain types geometry that i can use in architecture and design. Everything in a sense is about the organization of information -- what is interesting is how that happens around pressure, in both physical and algorithmic computing.